AAP ties up with JJP in Haryana, to fix seats soon

NEW DELHI: Aam Aadmi Party has decided to go for an alliance with the recently-floated Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) in Haryana after the party’s talks on a tie-up with Congress broke down.

AAP

had been trying to form an alliance with Congress and

JJP

to take on BJP on the 10 Lok Sabha

seats

in the state.


“Since the chapter of an alliance with Congress in Delhi and Haryana has been closed, we have tied up with JJP. The seat sharing will be finalised on Friday,” said a source in AAP.

AAP claims that it has a strong chance in Gurgaon and Faridabad because they are in the National Capital Region from where thousands of people come to Delhi for work and witness the work done by the Kejriwal government.

While AAP has offered JJP a 4:6 seat-sharing formula (four for AAP and six for JJP), the latter has offered three of the 10 seats to the former. In the Jind bypoll, the JJP candidate supported by AAP had come second, while Congress was pushed to the third position. The ruling BJP candidate had got around 50,000 votes, JJP 37,000 and Congress a little over 22,000.

The results worked as a motivating factor for AAP, Congress and JJP to come together for an alliance in the state so that they could take advantage of the political situation and defeat BJP.

The proposal for an alliance in Haryana came from AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, who is learnt to have told Rahul Gandhi that an alliance among his party, Congress and JJP could throw a big challenge to BJP and defeat it on all seats. The talks of an alliance in Delhi broke down because Congress was not ready to accept the seat-sharing formula suggested by AAP. Congress didn’t want to give AAP a single seat in Punjab even though the latter has four MPs and 20 MLAs in the state. “In Chandigarh, we polled 1.5 lakh votes in 2014. In Goa we got 6% votes in the assembly elections. In Delhi, where Congress doesn’t have any MLA or MP, they wanted three Lok Sabha seats,” said the AAP source.

In contrast, Congress sources said AAP had become “greedy” and was demanding that the pact be extended to Punjab, Haryana and Goa. “AAP started demanding one seat in Goa where it could only get 6% votes in the assembly polls. They also wanted us to include JJP in the pact and give it three of the 10 seats in Haryana,” said a senior party leader.

JJP chief Dushyant Chautala didn’t say anything about an alliance with AAP, but said things may become clear in the next 48 hours. If the two parties come together, the battle for Haryana will become interesting.